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Ulysses

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How Proust Can Change Your Life

For anyone who ever wondered what Marcel Proust had in mind when he wrote the one-and-a-quarter-million words of In Search of Lost Time (while bedridden no less), Alain de Botton has the answer. For, in this stylish, erudite and frequently hilarious book, de Botton dips deeply into Proust’s life and work - his fiction, letter, and conversations – and distils from them that rare self-help manual: one that is actually helpful.

Vanity Fair [AudioGo]

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Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

In Search of Lost Time (Dramatized)

Featuring a fictional version of himself - 'Marcel' - and a host of friends, acquaintances, and lovers, In Search of Lost Time is Proust's search for the key to the mysteries of memory, time, and consciousness. As he recalls his childhood days, the sad affair of Charles Swann and Odette de Crecy, his transition to manhood, the tortures of love and the ravages of war, he realises that the simplest of discoveries can lead to astonishing possibilities.

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A Room of One's Own

A Room of One's Own, based on a lecture given at Girton College Cambridge, is one of the great feminist polemics. Woolf's blazing polemic on female creativity, the role of the writer, and the silent fate of Shakespeare's imaginary sister remains a powerful reminder of a woman's need for financial independence and intellectual freedom.

Fear and Trembling

The ethical as such is the universal, and as the universal it applies to everyone, which can be put from another point of view by saying that it applies at every moment. It rests immanently in itself, has nothing outside itself that is its end, but is itself the purpose for everything outside, and when that is taken up into it, it has no further to go.

The Complete Essays of Montaigne

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Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

War and Peace, Volume 1

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Bleak House

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The Brothers Karamazov [Naxos AudioBooks Edition]

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The Mill on the Floss

Maggie Tulliver has two lovers: Philip Wakem, son of her father’s enemy, and Stephen Guest, already promised to her cousin. But the love she wants most in the world is that of her brother Tom. Maggie’s struggle against her passionate and sensual nature leads her to a deeper understanding and to eventual tragedy

Mrs. Dalloway

It is a June day in London in 1923, and the lovely Clarissa Dalloway is having a party. Whom will she see? Her friend Peter, back from India, who has never really stopped loving her? What about Sally, with whom Clarissa had her life’s happiest moment? Meanwhile, the shell-shocked Septimus Smith is struggling with his life on the same London day.

To the Lighthouse

To the Lighthouse is Virginia Woolf’s arresting analysis of domestic family life, centering on the Ramseys and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland in the early 1900s. Nicole Kidman (Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut), who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Woolf in the film adaptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Hours, brings the impressionistic prose of this classic to vibrant life.

Audible Editor Reviews

In the second of the seven novels that make up Remembrance of Things Past, the young narrator, Marcel, and his grandmother visit the seaside resort of Balbec for his health. Neville Jason seamlessly portrays the parade of characters with subtle changes in inflection - whether Robert de Saint-Loup or Albertine Simenon. In addition to selecting the lyrical piano interludes, Jason has shaped each scene in his clear, measured presentation so the irony, humor and richness of Proust's observations engage the listener intimately.

Publisher's Summary

Within a Budding Grove, Part 2 is the second volume of Proust's monumental, seven volume, quasi-autobiographical novel Remembrance of Things Past, , in which young Marcel falls under the spell of an enchanting group of adolescent girls. At first, intoxicated by their beauty and athletic energy, he finds it difficult to choose between them. But gradually he finds himself drawn to the beautiful Albertine, without guessing how much she is to mean to him in the future.

Within a Budding Grove is the second book of the seven-volume In Search of Lost Time / Rememberances. For audiobook purposes, it is divided into two parts, this being the second. As with this entire series, it is beautifully narrated by Neville Jason. This particular section covers the first visit of the narrator to the seaside town of Balbec. At first he is very much in the company of his grandmother and her friends and acquaintances, but he later forms three significant friendships. The first is with the astonishingly good-looking (and finely dressed) Marquis de Saint-Loup. The second is with the painter, Elstir. The third, and most intriguing, is with Albertine Simonet, one of the little band of seemingly wild young girls holidaying in Balbec. Proust is an unhurried author, who delights in ordinary events, and this book is no exception. If you like really wonderful writing, a relaxed pace, and are after a break from a diet of thrillers, you will really like this.

I vainly seek out superlatives with which to describe this masterpiece, and Neville Jason's rendition of this masterpiece. This part of this book is, quite simply, the best work I've ever read (or have had read to me). It is so moving, the writing so powerful, that it left me speechless every time I listened to it, and I couldn't wait till the next time I could get to it.

In this volume, the author reaches adolescence, and like every young man, is moved by the wonder and beauty and mystery of young women. This volume tells of the author's early experiences, and sometimes surprising success, in seeking the companionship of the objects of his heart's desire. It is charming, lovely, funny, surprising, sometimes thrilling, satisfying on every level.

And as for the narration of Mr. Jason -- this rendition is so good that I had to get the book, but when I started reading, I realized in the first paragraph how much I missed Mr. Jason's narration, how much he adds to the experience.

For those who love life, literature, and the finest that writing has to offer.